


Golden Child, Lion Boy

by theandrogynousdragon



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Catholic Guilt, Dissociation, Fist Fights, Gay Peter Pevensie, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Nightmares, Peter Pevensie Feels, Peter Pevensie has PTSD, Peter Pevensie-centric, Peter has so many issues, Phantom pain, Smoking, Swearing, Underage Smoking, aroace Edmund, bisexual polyam Lucy, excessive hand washing, getting into fights as a form of self harm, honestly who wouldn't what with everything that happened to this kid, lesbian Susan, mention of mental health treatments in the 40s, this boy needs so many hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27504082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theandrogynousdragon/pseuds/theandrogynousdragon
Summary: There is so much blood on his hands. But there isn't, at the same time, and he bites his tongue so he doesn't start screaming.This is not what he looked like at sixteen except it is because that's how old he is now but he's not, not really, and he can't breathe.
Relationships: Caspian & Peter Pevensie, Caspian/Peter Pevensie, past Peter Pevensie/Original Male Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 93





	Golden Child, Lion Boy

He walks through a wardrobe at thirty-seven and comes out the other side fifteen again, sprawled on the floor in an ungainly tumble of limbs, and Peter is _so angry_. How dare this happen? How dare the lion send him _back_ , back to a world he very emphatically doesn't fit in? How dare, how dare, how _fucking_ dare he? And then he feels guilty for being angry because, well, this world includes his parents. This world doesn't press a sword in a fifteen-year-old's hands and point him towards the bloodbath. This world doesn't make him feel like he's suffocating under the weight of a crown he never _wanted_ , let alone asked for.

* * *

He feels guilty, but that anger still lodges itself in his chest, makes it _ache_ like the cursed knife shard that even Lucy's cordial couldn't draw from his wound. (That ache is almost comforting, in a strange way. Peter very firmly decides never to think about that too much.)

* * *

He wakes up from yet another dream of blood and bright flashing blades and horses screaming and _so much death, oh God, the smell_ and stumbles, still half-asleep, into the loo to wash his hands for the seventeenth time that day. His hands are raw and bleeding and he stares blearily at the red mixing into the soapy water for a full minute before it occurs to him to shut the water off and put plasters over the worst cracks in his dried-out palms.

* * *

He was seventeen when he nearly got his right leg taken off at a battle on the edge of Archenland. It healed well enough, but his sense of touch from the knee down never really recovered. He gets an odd twinge every so often, now, even though that battle technically won't happen for two years by his body's clock.

* * *

Peter stares at himself in the mirror and doesn't recognize the face looking back at him most of the time. Narnia Peter had lost the puppy fat on his cheeks very quickly, had collected a great number of scars that England Peter doesn't have. He thinks about... just, doing it, sometimes. Taking a big knife and tracing the scars he had, should have, won't have here. Every time he realizes what he's suggesting he holes himself up in his room, hands shaking, bile on his teeth.

* * *

The first time he sees his mother again startles him badly because he hadn't noticed until just then that he'd _forgotten_ what her voice sounded like. He feels sick, disgusted with himself because what kind of son goes and forgets his own _mother_? The disgust turns to a strange sort of fear that causes him to just—go blank, somehow, when he realizes that he doesn't know his father's name anymore, doesn't recognize the man at the train station beyond a passing thought that he looks a bit like Ed and Su.

* * *

That happens a lot, the blanking out. It's not always fear that does it, either. Sometimes it just... happens. Sometimes it's almost pleasant, a sort of floating feeling that reminds him of smoking ritual herbs with Oreius. Sometimes he just loses time. It scares the hell out of him, but he'll never tell anyone, not Mother and Father, not his siblings, not _anyone_ , ever. He doesn't want to get committed and drugged up to the eyeballs on God-knows-what so some self-righteous twat can stab him in the eye.

* * *

High King Peter had grown fond of wine, especially as he got older. Peter of England is very much Not Allowed to have any alcohol at all, which is frustrating when he can't sleep (most nights). Peter of England picks up quite the smoking habit instead, sitting on his windowsill with the glass propped open and watching the smoke curl up and disappear into the night sky.

* * *

Peter sneaks out into the parlor on nights his father sleeps on the sofa, crammed onto the lumpy cushions and twisted uncomfortably so his long legs fit. Peter sits there in the dark and soothes his father when he wakes up screaming. Peter has long since stopped waking up screaming. Screaming draws attention, after all.

* * *

His father's name is Edward. He doesn't know how he could have forgotten that. (Susan named her daughter Helen after their mother, so that one at least he remembered.)

* * *

Peter starts getting into fights because it feels like that's all he's good at anymore. Swinging a piece of wood into someone's face isn't the same as swinging a sword, but it's near enough that something buzzing under his skin is appeased. Breaking Jonathan Belby's nose is also immensely satisfying. Git deserved it for what he said about Susan. Definitely worth getting shouted at for.

* * *

He comes home with split lips and split knuckles, bruises blooming on his skin like ugly flowers, and he laughs and laughs because of _course_. Of course all High King Peter is good for is violence. Mad King Peter, his enemies had called him once. Lion-skinned King, Blood-coated King. He thinks it horribly apt.

* * *

Neither of Cair Paravel's kings take wives. (Both _queens_ had taken wives, though Lucy had also acquired a husband.) Edmund because he's not interested in marrying anyone, ever, and Peter because he's not interested in women. Peter courts a beautiful dryad boy named Gedeloc. Gedeloc has hair the color of garnet and so many freckles splashed over his skin that it looks a full shade darker than it is. Gedeloc had been kind and a bit vicious and utterly, absolutely wonderful. Peter misses him fiercely. Peter snogs a red-haired English boy with heaps of freckles behind the church and tries very hard not to feel guilty about it. It doesn't work.

* * *

He'd loved Gedeloc very much, but he'd never quite shaken the thought that he was filthy for doing it. Disgusting, unnatural, sinner, _damned_. Peter had a very good reason for absolutely _loathing_ Mass.

* * *

He turns sixteen and he feels like clawing his own skin off because _this is not right_. _This_ is not what he looked like at sixteen except it _is_ because that's how old he is but he's _not_ , really. He fought giants at sixteen and has been deaf in his left ear ever since. He is sixteen and giants don't exist and he can hear perfectly. He spends his birthday plastering a polite smile on his face and biting a damn hole in his tongue to keep from screaming, bloody crescents dug into his palms, blood filling his mouth. He spends that whole night dry-heaving into the toilet.

* * *

He's sitting at the train station and something _hums_ under his skin and _oh, oh thank God, oh fuck, we got back_. Then he finds out how long it's been and he screams until his throat is raw and something feels broken in his chest.

* * *

He picks up his old sword and it feels like coming home. It feels a little like resurrecting a ghost, too, but that's fine. He's comfortable with ghosts.

* * *

Caspian the Tenth is an absolute bastard. Caspian the Tenth is also unfairly pretty, all liquid dark eyes and silky hair and tightly coiled muscle. Peter hates him utterly.

* * *

...Ah. He does not, actually, _hate_ Caspian. This is going to be a problem.

* * *

He draws his sword and snarls at him, spitting ugly words because he doesn't know what else to do. Every single one of his siblings tears into him for doing it, which, fair enough. It's not Caspian's fault that Peter's being an idiot.

Then, of course, Caspian's uncle has to go and complicate everything. Should be fun. 

* * *

“If I don't make it,” Peter mutters, picking at a loose thread on his gambeson and very much Not Looking At Caspian before forcing himself to turn around and look at Caspian because this is _important_ , damn it. “Narnia's future is in your hands.” ( _I think I might be in love with you_ , he doesn't say. No use saying something like that when he might die soon.)

Caspian looks stunned and horrified and worried all at once. Peter half wants to kiss that look off his stupidly pretty face. “And what about your _own_ future?” Caspian says, and Peter freezes. _God. God, fuck, don't you dare cry, not now._

He swallows past a sudden lump in his throat before saying quietly, “I was thinking about a career in medicine.” And he had. Thought about it. What he'd like to do with the rest of his life, because he'd sort of given up on ever going back to Narnia. He's seen too much war to try to sign up like Ed's been doing (which is ridiculous, Ed's fourteen and nowhere near passing as any older than that.) There's too much blood on Peter's hands for him to want to add to it. But maybe if he becomes a doctor, he can sort of. Atone, more or less. For the blood and the unnatural bit both. He's pretty sure penance doesn't quite work like that, but then he's never really paid much attention to Father Robinson's sermons anyway. Caspian looks like he wants to say something, but someone calls Peter's name and the moment's gone.

* * *

They're all standing in front of a tree that is, abruptly, not a tree but a doorway, and Peter feels like screaming again. Aslan's already told him that this is _it_ for him and Su; they can't come back, not ever. But Peter is in love with Prince Caspian the Tenth of Telmarine Narnia, and he has to walk away. His chest aches so badly he can't breathe. He can't stay here, he knows that, but he doesn't want to go either. Peter shoves it all down and says goodbye to Reep and Trumpkin and the others, but then he gets to Caspian and _oh, great, I'm crying now_. Caspian wipes at the tears with his thumbs, gently, and Peter's gearing up to step back when Caspian takes a half-step forward and kisses him. It's a little rough, and he can taste salt from the tears running down his face, but _God_ is it bloody perfect. They break the kiss and Peter feels a little dizzy so he's sure he must have heard wrong when Caspian turns to Aslan and asks to go with them to England. “Please,” Caspian says, and no, he _did_ hear that right, what in the world? “I cannot rule these people, not when my own people oppressed them. And,” he glances back at Peter with a little smile. Peter feels like he's melting. “My heart belongs to someone who cannot return to Narnia. I would go with him, if my lord allows it.”

The lion looks amused, “as long as you are certain, then.”

“I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”

“Very well.” Aslan steps aside, and then they're going through the doorway, Caspian's hand clutched tight in his, stumbling out into a busy train station. Caspian stares at the unfamiliar English clothes he's now wearing, a knapsack undoubtedly full of schoolbooks on his shoulder.

He looks around at the station before grinning, “England is very strange.”

Peter laughs, tugging him into a car before the train leaves them all behind, “yeah, it is.” Ed moans about his lost torch but it feels distant as Peter looks at this boy, this prince of the Telmarines who gave it all up gladly just to be with him, _Peter Pevensie_ , a boy who gets into fights and smokes _far_ too much and isn't a king of anything at all, and he doesn't feel dirty anymore. 


End file.
